Polymers are chemical compounds that typically have high molar masses and are composed of a large number of repeating units, called monomers. Polymers may be formed in a chemical reaction, in which a number of monomer molecules are joined sequentially to form a chain. A single type of monomer or multiple types of monomers may be used. Some polymers may be made electrically conductive by oxidation or reduction. Polymers may occur naturally or may be synthesized. Virtually all plastics are synthetic polymers. Electrically conductive plastics are used in a wide variety of applications and may reduce sizes, material and fabrication costs, and have long life in environmental conditions unfavorable for other conductive materials. The principal advantages of conducting polymers over other conducting materials are their ability to be processed and their potential ability to combine the mechanical properties of plastics, such as flexibility, toughness, etc., with the high conductivity of metals.
Nanofibers are very small fibers, typically less than one micron in diameter, and may be very strong and used in applications requiring very small dimensioned components. Conducting nanofibers may be used in electrical or electronic applications, such as photo-voltaic cells, light emitting diodes, battery electrodes, chemical sensors, super-capacitors, solar cells, battery terminals, and the like. Prior synthesis techniques include electrochemical polymerization using a scanning microneedle electrode, using a porous membrane as a template reaction, chemical polymerization in the presence of surfactants, and a vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) nanofibers seeding approach. Each of these techniques has limitations in terms of complexity, effectiveness, size of the resulting nanofibers, rate of polymerization, scalability, need for purification to remove seeds, surfactants, or templates from the nanofibers, or any combination thereof. Thus, there is a need for a synthesis technique that is simple, rapid, and produces compact homogenous conductive nanofibers without the use of surfactants, hard templates, or seeds.